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Hurricane Chaos Can't Keep Carlos Slim From Having A Billion Dollar Day

Carlos Slim may have booked a billion dollar gain, but Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz won the day in percentage terms.

Since markets reopened on Wednesday morning, stocks have taken equity holders for a bit of ride in a short week of trading. After jumping on Thursday in response to positive macroeconomic reports, stocks closed the week virtually flat over Wednesday’s open. Ultimately, it seems that investors had priced in Hurricane Sandy by last Tuesday, and as such there was little action in response to the devastating storm.

Instinctive long natural disaster plays, such as home improvement retailers, generally went the way of the greater market. Home Depot closed flat over last Tuesday, while rival Lowe’s climbed by slightly more than 1% over the same period. However, the insurance companies with the most earnings exposure to Sandy, according to Credit Suisse, did not fare so well. Arch Capital Group is down nearly 5% over last Tuesday, Chubb Corporation has fallen nearly 7% and Allstate has lost almost 9% of its market capitalization, despite announcing third quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates on Friday.

Warren Buffett, America’s second richest man, has a considerable stake in the insurance game thanks to his Berkshire Hathaway’s ownership of Government Employees Insurance Company, or GEICO. Berkshire, which is down less than 2% over last Tuesday, opened higher this morning after The Washington Post Company reported measurable third quarter earnings growth. The gains faded, however, as the session wore on, with Buffett ultimately ending the day as the biggest loser amongst the 50 billionaires whose wealth Forbes tracks in real time. Although Berkshire lost just .65%, the Oracle of Omaha’s net worth fell by $297.5 million.

In percentage terms, however, Buffett was lucky compared to Texas billionaire Harold Simmons. Shares of Simmons’ industrial holding company, Valhi, fell 5.58% on light volume. Coupled with a loss of nearly 3.5% in his shares of Titanium Metals Corp., Simmons lost $254.57 million on the day, or 4.81% of his net worth.

Friday wasn’t all bad for billionaire corporate insiders, however. In fact, the wealthiest man on the planet, Carlos Slim, had himself a billion dollar day. The phenomenon isn’t particularly rare for Mexico’s telecom titan, however, as a 1.94% increase in the value of his public holdings was all it took for his net worth to climb by $1.32 billion.

The session’s real success story was the man who came in just behind Slim with a gain of $74.54 million. New York City native and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz enjoyed a 9.05% appreciation of his shares in the Seattle-based coffee retailer. The bounce, which erased what was a dismal October for Starbucks’ stock, was the product of a trifecta of positive news released on Friday. In addition to beating quarterly earnings expectations and raising its 2013 earnings per share guidance, Starbucks raised its dividend to 21 cents, an increase of 24% over last quarter’s dividend.

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